Existential Parenting

Lucy looks like a happy kid. Here we see her heading in to the gym to see her pals. She enjoys coloring, playing with the large legos and chatting it up with the other small people. On the way out of the gym she receives a dixie cup filled with animal crackers or goldfish, after she washes her hands, of course. This is typically a highlight of our day.

By all accounts, life is pretty good.

When not mingling with her kind she enjoys a little solitary time. My girl likes to relax. She kicks back and takes in the world. Life is simple.

But I fear that underneath Lucy’s happy exterior lurks something deeper. I think she is struggling to do more than just exist. She is finding her essence, perhaps this life of coloring and taking walks is just not enough. What gives me this idea?

Take a look at Lucy’s bookshelf. A good look.

Right there between Eric Carle’s “With Us, on the Earth and Sea” and the mind numbing rhyming of “Hop on Pop” we have Jean-Paul Sartre’s “No Exit and Three Other Plays.”

This kid is going to be hell in her teenage years.

“Criminals together. We’re in hell, my little friend, and there’s never any mistake there. People are not damned for nothing.” – Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit

7 responses to “Existential Parenting”

Maybe she’ll wait to lose her mind until she goes off to college like you did, leaving me with the false hope I’d done a good job. In the end, though, you turned out pretty well in spite of what I think of as the “bad years”. ha.

Ha! How did I miss this post. Hilarious. One night D brought me Good Omens (Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett) and asked me to read it. I chuckled to myself, thinking he’d get bored and walk away before I was done with the first page. HE LOVED IT. I read him the entire first chapter before putting it away where he couldn’t find it again. I’d kind of like him to have the opportunity to explore the idea of belief in beneficent higher powers before I destroy it for good.

My son has picked up a bunch of my adoption-related books, like “how it feels to be adopted,” and whenever he’s carrying it around the living room I’m like “dude, Potamus, you don’t have to worry about it, you’re not adopted.” And the other day he was really interested in Carl Jung’s memoir. :-P

For me I’m hoping it means he’ll like reading, because I do, and his daddy doesn’t!